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STAMPED OUT, THE DIGITAL DEMISE OF VANCOUVER’S HISTORICAL POST OFFICE

“Here lies the days of a good ol job, may you rest in peace.”

Throughout the last few years Canada Post has been aggressively overhauling its postal depots and business operations in an attempt to catch up with modern world technology and establish a competitive online business model. Postal depots throughout the country are being transformed, the digital revolution has caused the demise of many these depots and one in particular has been Vancouver’s Historical Post Office Building.

These were the final days of the Historical Post Office Building a relic in downtown Vancouver and I was lucky enough to walk freely and document this heritage building in photo’s one last time. This place had been a part of my life for the last 11 years I had witnessed its slow painful death, day by day, bit-by-bit as it was being stripped to its bare bones. I had to photograph its setting sun but the typical comforting silhouettes so common in setting suns we’re not here instead they were cold dark ominous shadows in an empty shell.

Posties who once worked here will tell you this building was more of a home than a place of employment it’s the reason why they couldn’t let it go quietly into the afterlife. I’d seen the pride in the eyes of these Posties, they could not accept the terms of this reality, they were trapped in the depths of denial. The admiration for this concrete tomb was no different to how a Shrine, a Temple or Mecca are worshiped. Now a shell of its former self, today it resembles a concrete mausoleum of the blue-collar era of unionized labour. “Here lies the days of a good ol job, may you rest in peace.”

Built in 1953 it’s the end of the line here at 349 West Georgia Street, this Depot is now deceased, no more mail, no more stamps. The new main depot for Vancouver’s mail is not even in the downtown core it’s located out of East Van in a station seven times smaller. Is the sun setting on the entire postal industry the low numbers of mail don’t lie. Is the eventual demise on route when it arrives is anyone's guess much like the mail I suppose?

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